I got this book to satisfy the curiosity of my imaginary friend Noname, who won’t be commenting on the book, because he isn’t real.

(Edna St. Vincent Millay quote) “Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.” I like that…. And re: the whole quote, Edna was certainly, out of all the girls with Edwardian-type names (lol), the most rebellious, right.

…. (I am Bella. I am sad. Maybe I die…. Today!)

OMG, Bella…. OMG.

Yeah, well…. At least you have something going for you, right. In a world of vampires and werewolves: you score high on English tests!

Although, in Bella’s case: she should NEVER have been tested (or, exposed!) to anything from before 1992, you know. They should have given her a psychological test, and been like…. This requires a special intervention!….

…. “I was with Edward in my happy place.”

I don’t think that the WRITING is terrible in the “Twilight” series, generally, although I wouldn’t want these people to be my friends, right: I don’t agree with the stereotype or whatever, you know…. But I DO think that This Last Book, Number Four IS working itself up to be…. Not as atrociously vomit-worthy as the reputation, but…. Much closer to that reputation, than the other three.

…. “the plague of the immortal children”

My gut reaction (of course) is that it’s a disgusting, awful, stupid story, you know. But I guess it makes sense, you know: if “mythology” (in the sense of all non-“realism”) can give you Edward the Edwardian, you know: the ultimate conformist-romantic myth for early 21st century nostalgics, right…. I suppose inevitably it must also give you the evil children legend, right: the ultimate taboo buster, right…. And I mean, children ARE a little problematic, right: they’re irrational; they’re undeveloped; they have to be taught things and kept from wrecking shit…. And they make people get psycho attached and possibly violent, you know. Different from the evils of adolescence, but also destructive, in its own way, the destruction wrought by children is also immense…. Children are the price we pay, a dying sort of being, for wanting our kind to continue: but bills can we heavy things, right….

And that’s just to interpret the myth or whatever, according to Middle World rationalist-symbolism interpretation. Stephenie gives the impression of one who cares for little beyond her characters’ twisted interpersonal dynamics—albeit that, if Edward were a Millennial (1991?) instead of a vampire, the whole dream falls apart, right…. But every now and then, she dips into the deep well with her paper cup, and makes me wonder what monsters live in the wild: away from the noise and normality of our world….

Although, it does seem like not such a good novel, even of its type: and worse than the first three.

…. Although it is curious to speculate that many respectable men probably hate this stuff almost equally for its conformity dance (It’s conformist to dance! It’s conformist to dance!), and for its taboo busting (with the unnatural children thing, right), because they hate and fear girls and such, but they also fight because they imagine that that supports society: the new society or the old one, according to their loyalties; meanwhile somebody’s wife is to be heard moaning—“Oh, Society…. I can’t get it off my back; it always rests right in that ~spot~, where I have my ~backache~…. (little whimper)….”

Right?

…. It’s a curious story. First there is, among the nods to the idea of the white wedding and Old Hollywood, the presence of the Natives, right—which has a lot of potential, not least because, although it’s not the Fifties image of a wedding, having a mixed Native-white guest list, right: there was a time when it would have happened a lot, when there were many white-Native weddings, right; and yet somehow we suppressed our own blood, in the name of blood, right…. But it is kinda racist how Stephenie does it. It’s the new racism, you know. It’s a cautionary tale.

…. It would be one thing if Bella had some agency in something, somehow, and didn’t hate herself: and let Edward be the Crown Prince out of her choice. But she just hates herself, and considers herself good for nothing, and then lets him…. mark her, you know. And then they both hate each other so much, they have a fight about who hates themselves the most, right.

Not everything (like that) has to be like, equal opportunity slaying like there’d be in a trad Gardnerian coven, (apparently), and not everyone has to be like me, right: Aquarius Sun, Aries Moon and Rising Sign, Aquarius Venus: C’mon girlie, rule and conquer, and do it vigorous….

But the way Bella is, is not…. She’s not healthy. None of these people are healthy. The intellectuals do the fans a disservice by dismissing the whole thing with contempt, and trying to get the self-haters to rag on themselves more: because someone needs to look at this with a certain detachment, right. I mean, sometimes it IS poorly written, At Times, you know…. But 80% of it even in the worse passages is: are you sure, that this is the kind of life you want, right?

…. It’s funny how Dumm-Dumm Kind is simultaneously fascinated by—attracted to, in a way—the ‘dark’ world, non-paleface-kind, and also, of course, driven to other them, right. When I believed in racism, I felt compelled to exclude—that to me was the only imaginable ‘safe’, ‘honest’ thing; it ‘made sense’.

But I had no idea what I believed, right.

…. And of course she never goes to Dartmouth, because Dartmouth started letting women in around 1972, and with Edward Cullen you’ve taken the vampire train back to 1917, lol.

OMG…. Some of it is bad. 🤖😹

…. “Book Two: Jacob”

Wow, just…. I mean, it’s not About Jacob, right: he’s not a normative, respectable person, right; but we can’t not have this outing where we shove it deep down his throat that he think he’s a mindless-aggressive minority male, right…. The whole thing is meant to Other, Jacob, right; there’s quiet, proper Bella—with her one word or short phrase chapter titles, that come with a Contents page—and then there’s monkey boy Jacob…. isn’t it amazing how whitey can take like, animalism, and make it like something…. Like, have you ever SEEN a video of a monkey, right? But people use it as an insult, because they think monkeys are the-blackpeople-of-racists, right!…. And yeah, Jacob’s chapters are a sentence or long phrase and there’s no Contents page, right…. Because he’s just a monkey male, not like porcelain doll Bella, or Edward, the precious elite over-controlled, you know, ~dead~, lol…. Guy who lives by controlling his girl; Not by…. You know…. “I’ll punch you, bro!” “Bro don’t punch me!”

People act like you can separate the ideas of sexism and racism—like we think that when the man is off burning the red man’s village or whatever: that that is like racism, and sexism is this other project he squeezes in after his main job is done, right…. But I think this—inadvertently—shows how there is no separation; a sort of sexism creates a sort of racism, and vice versa, right…. They’re just different cogs in the machine, right….

There is a certain amount male femme-phobic phobia of this series, but, although “Twilight”, “New Moon”, and “Eclipse”—while they certainly do have new sexism and new racism, and obviously aren’t meant as literary experiments, they are entertaining pop-style romances, with not more and sometimes—If You Read Them Right, OK—perhaps rather less, you know…. Diabolism
of every day life, you know: diabolism at the DMV (old name for a certain state government bureaucracy), or at the super market, right…. But “Breaking Dawn” is like—dog shit, you know…. “Infectious Waste: Not For Disposal In General Garbage”, right…. A lot of pop-style romances are like that, right…. For like 2/3 or 3/4 of the series, there’s a delicate tension held between society and freedom: and sometimes it’s held rather well, you know…. But then, when it’s time to get married and finish things up with ribbons and bows, it’s like: (throws up flowers) Hitler’s getting married! Weee! Only the finest human skulls will do—just kidding! (wink wink) (stage whisper) A few epithets will do…. (wink wink)

Like, the trad rich always win in the end, sometimes, right. The things you could do with money…. And people CHOOSE to be the trad rich, right. Fucking…. Fucking…. “All right: I don’t have time for you to come up with an insult: they are bad.” They are, SO, bad, So Bad, that…. “Uh huh. Okay. Well just go with an emoji….” 👹

~Right?

…. I mean, I saw part of the “Barbie” movie and it was like: this is so weird; I love Greta Gerwig’s other movies so much…. This I couldn’t watch at all: it’s like, not bad, exactly; it’s so…. So…. So, much, right…. And Threads was like, Yeah, maybe it was just a case of not being the intended audience, right….

That is not how I feel about “Breaking Dawn”—specifically, right. BD is like…. “Yeah, only a certain kind of beetle can munch on the horse manure, for everyone else, it’s just…. Horse shit, right….”

You know: like, I feel like it’s two very different, stances, somehow, you know…. Two different…. Not the same thing.

…. It’s like: “‘Feminism: A Case of Dirty Blood?’: it’s a book I got for you, Adolf; enjoy….” “Hmm…. (thoughtful) Perhaps it’s like a drug in the bloodstream? It could be a chemical pollutant….” “So scientific, Mein Fuhrer! So masc-y, right! You’re a good dictator! We love you!” “Hmm…. Perhaps, afraid, is the word you meant to use?” “Yea, yes! We afraid you! I mean—“ “It’s fine. Only one of us can be the brain.”

…. Two things make it weird:

One—it’s like, we think of old racism etc, and new racism etc: but it’s like…. It blends, you know. New is added, the old remains; it just recedes…. But it’s still there, somewhere. The old illness.

Two—it’s like, you bring in a new demographic or whatever, it’s like, “Oppression should work for ME!!”, right. So evil; so naive—right…. Like, you’re an 8 year old white boy, you watch some dumb movie about how bookish white boys are generals; then you get up and walk away, and some lady is like, I’m the Head Gossip in this village. You have to cross that ‘t’ differently~you know, some fucking thing that means nothing, except this is the One Way, right, that she can hurt you: the One Thing she has, and you’re like…. The empire is supposed to work for me! I saw the movie—aren’t I the main character?

Bella wants patriarchy, for sure; ambivalent about motherhood, monogamy…. You know: but the empire should work out for her, right?

Isn’t that how these things work? 🤔😸

…. The Four Covers:
—People like hands. People like to eat.
—Flowers are also nice.
—Cloth—Clothing/Decorative ribbons…. And destruction.
—Wait, wait, one more: white women…. Are better…. Than men of color. Ooo! Ooo! 🫨👱🏻‍♀️👹

…. “some Goth version of a bad sitcom”. It’s like, Stephenie has unveiled that she hates herself, right—and not just that Bella, Edward, and Jacob hate ~their~ respective selves, right….

Like, what is the point of that line…. Other than to court destruction…. It’s like the white girl suicide attack, right: she’s dowsed in gasoline and she’s gonna die, but the little Indian boy is gonna end up with third-degree burns, if he’s lucky, right….

“And Then There Were None”, right. Ten Little Indians. Ten, Little…. Epithets!

The evolution of whiteness: from Ten Little Epithets, to…. Breaking Dawn. (wipes tears) It’s been, a Beautiful Journey….

…. “The girl was a classic martyr. She’d totally been born in the wrong century.”

True, and yet…. So popular. 🤔

But yeah: Stephenie either hates: (a) herself, (b) Bella, (c) Jacob, or (d) all of the above, plus more, right.

Ooo. Unpleasant.

…. It kinda is propaganda though, Number Four: I mean, they’re all, lazy, at the very least, but this is positively ~ugly~, you know: the Great-Hearted White Father offered to give his wife away to the red pond scum, but the Noble White Mother, said, No…. No pond scum! No to little red boys! We will give birth to a new generation, and though we should die, we shall keep our blood, cold!…. 🥶 💀 🧛‍♂️ 🧛‍♀️

…. And the Red Men are afraid of an interracial birth, and they have a collectivistic, socialistic government: god, they’re racist red Reds! We can ALL get behind fighting THAT!

~It’s like: some writers think they’ve succeeded if they’ve united their whole culture, or whatever, against the “villain”…. But thank God we’re not racist. We’re, Individualist! 😓😌😗

…. God, and the Indians and the whites are going to fight: and the Indians are going to be all killed, or badly mauled, the “good Indian” is trying to rebel against “tyrannical Indian-dom” or whatever, but the reds will all have to die anyway, or most of them, right…. Because that’s what white people do. Although it hurts us to do it, inside, right. We just have no choice. The collectivistic, tyrannical tribes are too violent, too uncivilized.

The continuing desire of the white race for genocide, right.

…. It really is White Supremacist Individualism, right.

…. Although, yeah: I’m not ashamed of being subtle and ambivalent where it’s warranted, right—albeit that’s, mostly not this volume, right.

Some people have this idea, like: the More Unsubtle, and Unyielding, My Complicated Theories Of Radicalism, Are…. (crushes soda can with robot arm), The More They’ll, Hold The Line. Start to talk, really, talk, back and forth, with the gremlins, (robot arm does chop)—No!

~That’s not my radicalism, you know.

…. The other thing is, the first three books average 530 pages; even Eclipse, a little longer, is 629–but this is significantly longer, at 754, so about 40% longer than the average of books 1-3; about 20% longer than Eclipse—which felt a LITTLE, long, but the actual ~quality~ seemed the same: this feels like the classic “butter scraped over too much bread” (somewhere in that line of Bilbo’s was Something about industrialization and commercialization, right)—just too loose; not tight: long, boring conversations that go nowhere, repeat, and demonstrate stupidity that’s difficult to get a grip on, the way that the stupidity of people in books 1-3 seems…. Real, somehow. It’s just not well written. Not tight, not worked-out right. Not entertaining.

…. It’s like: we get that you don’t like Natives, Stephenie. Enough.

It’s like: she’s Explaining, how the Natives should treat each other, to destroy their race, so she doesn’t have to hold the bloody knife, right. It’s like….

(Hamlet’s Father’s Ghost) (ghostly voice) Kill yourself, Hamlet; you suck…. You…. Suck…. I’m actually French, Hamlet: I hate English people. I want you guys to kill yourselves, so that the French don’t have to invade and kill you themselves, and look bad doing it…. You suck, Hamlet; you’re worthless…. I’m a neutral third-party; you can trust me….

~If Stephenie Meyer were writing “Hamlet” and it was about Natives, lol.

…. It’s like: Hitler hated his father, you know. He called the first chapter of “Mein Kampf”, “In the House of my Parents”, right.

(Hitler: morose/dismissive) Oh yes—my childhood home, my childhood home! Pah! I was living, in the house of my PARENTS! (slams beer can down) (cries)

~It’s like, was there a note of individualism in white racism as early as the first part of the 20th century?…. How “new” is White Supremacist Individualism, anyway?…. I mean, not that it matters: if it’s new; if it’s old…. Right?

…. It is kinda darkly hilarious how Stephenie gave white people this alternate reality where Anglos constantly have to passively take racial slurs from Native Americans, right.

Whiteness is like, some people’s religion, right. It’s just heresy to Think about it—at all. Like, on Threads, someone was like, Can we be proud to be white? Discuss. (Killing babies could provide meat for the homeless. Discuss.) And I just kinda briefly tried to say what whiteness is—looking like a slave owner—and how it’s not something that comes from nature. It’s not you, you know—it’s not real. And then somebody wants to get into it with me, like, he’s saying he gazes at his peach-pink arm every day, and it just fills him with this feeling that life is good—how could I rip that away from him by saying that whiteness isn’t “natural”—notice how he didn’t notice the difference between product of nature, and natural. Like, I tried to make the analogy with height: you’re 5’8”, say, whoopdy-fucking-do: nobody’s ever been killed or made a slave, over that, so there’s no fear/glory, etc. over it, right. So he told me I was making him afraid, basically—like, he was gonna tell the whole world on me, or whatever, saying these crazy things, right. I’ll tell Mom! I KNOW this is a White World: the epithets are just renting the servants’ quarters! If you can’t get that through your skull, buddy—you won’t have any friends!!!!

I knew I was right, obviously, but sometimes just being on the internet and dealing with the sickness, makes you wonder, right: do I have ~spite~ for the sickness? Am I handling this bag of weirdos the right way? ~(being hauled off to the psych ward) I really am 5’8”! (crying, gnashing) I was BORN to be 5’8”!!

So yeah: I did a rune reading, and basically it was like: this shit—whiteness and all that—that’s just not you. You didn’t do anything but tell on shit and tell it it’s not you, basically.

So that made me feel better….

White people are funny, when they air views like that, though. It’s, SO COMMON, for people to be like, “I’m not my ancestors! Who gives a fuck about the ancestors—I piss on my family line, on those who went before!

I’m just trying to be, White. Gotta keep it clean, keep it pink-fleshed, am I right, brothers! We’re not going to let a pack of filthy ancestors, take that away, are we?”

~It’s like…. Do they make pills, I mean: psychiatrists work so hard on this stuff, right—do we know, can we guess, what part of the brain isn’t firing right, in these people? Could we get a few tests done, like what do they call it: a CAT scan?” 🐱 🤖

~But yeah: at least I have a fantasy where it’s understood how often a white guy has to go through life being demeaned by red men and their wives, right. It’s constant. Just constant belittlement by Native Americans. We need to start getting this stuff ~documented~; push for ~reform~, you know….

And some people would be like: yes, yes exactly!…. ~It’s like, if Sarcasm were a god, he’d be worried, he’d feel unsafe: a situation like this is like, an existential threat to Sarcasm’s very existence. How can he deal with a fucking comeback like that, right?

…. “So they had a blood bank ~and~ an X-ray machine?”

Well, they are white people, Jacob.

White people are very…. Science-y. 👌

…. God, you know, life is so unfair. People just don’t know what it’s like to be ~white~. If only we could DO something—like, we could make a movie, write a book. Tell OUR story.
—(nods earnestly) We can try, at least! They might try to stop us!
—(the god Sarcasm convulses in pain, finding that his way of life, his very way of ~Being~, is again under assault—vicious, cruel…. Unconscionable assault)

…. And the gender stuff is less pernicious—there is Some sympathy, some cultural treats, for Bella, right: the little factoids about the difficulties and dangers of pregnancy, the idea that it doesn’t just happen in between scenes of a 1940s Frank Capra comedy, right, (like, the wife says she’s pregnant, and then James Stewart goes to have an Important Talk At The Office, and then, a training montage or something, and then, the next time we see the wife, she is holding the newborn baby, and James Stewart coos over it for thirty seconds, and then says: That really is adorable. Now go on, scram: plot points! I’m just kidding, you’re adorable. No, really, scram: I’m getting paid more than your character, what are you, an extra with a speaking part? I have to go talk with the ~director~, of the film….)…. But it’s like: it is Weird, how like, having a baby, is like, the Culmination of Everything, right…. She doesn’t have to go to college, or learn how to fight; she doesn’t need to figure out how to get her sister in law to stop calling her best non-white friend a fucking dog, right…. She just needs to have a pregnancy which mysterious and physically difficult, right…. Stephenie doesn’t even pretend-prove that vanilla societal parenting “works”—no mysteriously vague comments that Bella’s child grows up, just as good as any fancy new world order where children are raised by child psychologists who actually had to earn qualifications before the state and the birth-giver would permit her to risk fucking up the kid on their watch, right…. (waves hands) Like no, no…. “She’s too young to be a parent, so why bother; I mean—well, everything WAS right in 1917, right….” ~Yeah, wow: but in the 1910s it was 21, not 17-18, or whatever…. So I guess that’s owes more to that song…. Fuck, it was Sixteen Going on Seventeen, fuck!~ And even in the 60s, the age was like 20, right, not, ~sixteen~, holy shit….

(taps forehead) The games these people play with your head, man.

~But yeah: not only is parenting not a paid, regulated profession undertaken by qualified people, (why blame your parents, right? Why do we delude ourselves into thinking that they were given even an outside chance, right?), it’s like…. You barely an adult, or a citizen, you know. You’re like the breeding cow, you know. It’s like, New Sexism, so there’s the factoid about babies kicking and hurting the mother from inside, and not like, God smiling and winking at Edward as he haggles over the price of the breeding cow with Charlie, right…. But is she an ~adult~, in any meaningful sense? Like alone an adult qualified to raise a child, right. “Being a parent is the hardest job there is. You know: some people are doctors: I’m a parent…. Regulations? (incoherent rage) It’s a fundamental human right: even people who can’t take care of themselves, and who skip therapy to watch “The Fast and The Furious”…. Goddamn it, I am NOT being sarcastic: these are our CUSTOMS!!…. It’s either this way, or the nuke war! JESUS is coming back! Will he find a nuke-free zone on which to land the chopper? Not if you get what YOU want, buddy….”

~But there’s money for the drink, money for the colonization projects, right….

…. You know, and it’s like:

—Hi. I’m a C-SPAN weirdo. Me and the robots have finished combing over the Official US government reports, and your argument doesn’t make sense.
—Does the official Cylon report take into consideration that we spend on this money on the colonial police, when the payout for society is that they shoot the Future Black Einstein, thus losing us all that tax money, and money in the economy, etc? Or the money that corporations waste—I’m talking about societal choices, private and economic as well as public and subject to voting and shit—promoting diet pills whose main payout to society is that the Future Female Shakespeare dies from taking them? Is that on any of these charts, that you and the Borg Queen printed out?
—(contemptuous dismissal, etc, etc.)
—Right. Because that shit isn’t a bug: it’s a feature. You know: we can talk about shit paying for itself when it’s a project that helps the EXISTING elite, right: does anybody ever say: let’s really clear up this issue of incompetent parenting—the new elite it will create will bring in so many more tax dollars for the government or whatever it is, right: it’ll pay for itself!!…. You know: there’s no one the average person is more afraid of than people like them, right, (unless it’s people who don’t LOOK like them), like, you can go to a codependent 12-Step meeting, and it’s like: the 12-Step World Headquarters Committee from fifty fucking years ago, or whatever, playing a Very Safe Game, right: decided who’s quotable. We find that if we carefully edit out the fatwas and terror attack documents of 16th century Christians, we can find Neutral Abstract Sayings Of Gold, right: but a magazine published last month you can get in any old Barnes & Noble doesn’t get that treatment, even if reading the whole thing wouldn’t induce you to call rival religious popes Satan incarnate, and to request beheadings, and shit, right—because when Self-Hating Codependent Mom Sally stumbles into a 12-Step group about working on her patterns instead of assuming that she can either slowly go crazy, but watch television, eyes glazed over while eating ice cream from the tub while the kids scream, or else kill herself, or else gossip, right…. Like, aside from the weird useless crazy lazy personal shit, (“It’s Larry’s fault! I know he’s making eyes at Amanda!”)—she doesn’t respect herself enough to think it isn’t all her fault, right: everything is personal, and everything can be solved by punishment, right…. ~The major road gets shut down by an accident in which somebody died, the sorta, “patriot” type—I don’t know a more polite way, right—yells borderline obscene things at an individual driver, as though he was gonna pull over and call the DMV and have their license suspended—like, literally, right— (white men are the government! Collectively—AND!, ~individually! And THAT, is what we need to start teaching the bureaucrats!), because their car didn’t move because there were other cars in front of them because the roads were shit and closed off because somebody died, right…. Everything is personal; everything is punishment…. (“I am the government, because I am a patriot, But, (raises hand), I’m not here to help you. I’m alienated from you. I’m here to test you. Punish you!”) (You know, it’s legalism—because he knows he’s no good, only Law is good: he’s loyal to the empire: but then psycho id-beast crap is laid on top of that right, or something like that, I don’t know: so the result is: Always Stay Out of My Way! Never Do Something Unusual If It Hurts Me! That’s a Rule! You Change A Custom: You Go To Jail!…. Like, how does this person—I don’t mean to be rude, but how does he get to vote and sit on home owner’s and municipal committees and get to make decisions about what the rules of life are, right?…. I’m sure he’ll keep an open mind when the mutant-spawn have a new idea to suggest, to decrease the number of excess violent deaths by 5%, right! “(explodes) This country was FOUNDED on excess violent death? Aren’t you a Patriot! I’m talking about the Family, here!”) ~You know, it’s like, people are ill, you know: routinely, routinely ill. How unusual is it, even? But if you wanted to like look at society and the parenting contract that society underwrites, you know: beneath the anger and the colonial defense militia muster to defend the tribes from genetic mutants, or whatever, with their new ideas…. It’s like, Codependent Mom Sally doesn’t think she’s worth it; it’s not worth society’s time to make sure she doesn’t abuse her kids, right. She doesn’t deserve it. It’s her fault….

I mean, obviously, right: she’s a woman. What could be more DISGUSTING, right…. Yeah, the wounds go pretty deep. (Child Hermes evaluating prayers) This century, you guys can try to narrowly avoid collective suicide. Maybe next century you can evolve….

…. I mean, the bottom line is: we’ll never have good parenting while we have racism, and racism is ~entrenched~, right. It just changes the surface-level justifications and methods. The gut of society hasn’t even begun to question it yet, you know.

…. I mean, South Africa ran a white security state dictatorship for decades with the white population at barely north of 10% of the total, right; and even after decades of clean politics (Black majority rule is a lot cleaner than white minority security state terror, at least), and Black presidents and Black-majority legislatures, the country is still essentially white-palace-Black-ghetto, you know. Until white world consciousness changes, even the most dramatic demographic changes just serve to make racial control more ugly and more dishonest, from the level of minority characters in media introduced to perpetuate harm against their groups—to whatever else, right.

I know: I am a little bubble of sunshine.

…. Wow, the female werewolf acknowledging the male werewolf’s leadership is like the one, or—you could probably count them on one hand—instances of truly supportive exchanges in the Twilight books. It throws you, right. Why positive?

Life lesson: without loving, supportive patriarchy, there wouldn’t be goodness in the world.

Surprising corollary: the female doesn’t have to be in a romantic relationship with the male leader to support loving, supportive patriarchy. She just has to submit to him!

…. But yeah: then she immediately eases into dismantling the corollary, right—the horror! 😱—like, a military unit of two is nothing if not a couple, right….

“…. it will be easier to deal with your pain than face mine.” ‘Help’ others because it’s easier than…. Acknowledging reality, basically. That quote belongs in some book about codependence. If it were in the first three books, I’d say that—I mean, the mean way to put it would be, Stephenie having a laugh at their expense, right; a stifled snicker, and a wink behind their back. But in THIS book, wow; I don’t know….

…. It’s like: and then the whole agony of the sterile feminist, right. Back to the 1880s: women touring the country giving speeches, urging girls to get married and be housewives, and can the whole ‘suffragette’ shit, right…. It’s like, how many billions of humans are there: and when has society ever failed to produce enough new members, right?…. It’s like, and when has society ever produced a generation of parents that even usually didn’t scar and traumatize their children, right? The hey-day of the KKK, was it then? What about the witch trials? Does any period in the historical record, at the very least, meet that description?

It’s like: what’s more important, ensuring that we produce “copies of ourselves”—even though that’s NEVER what they end up being…. And even though we ourselves UNDER estimate our similarity to our OWN parents!!—even if it means stigmatizing societal outliers, and producing such an excessively large human population that we make it impossible to the planet to comfortably support human life, or….

Or, you know: maybe it’s more important to ensure that the kids who do get born, get raised by people and a system that won’t traumatize them? I mean, children will be born, right. Think about it. If the government passed like a, Zero Child Policy: how well do you think enforcement of that would work, right? That government would stay in power for like, twenty minutes, right.

Yet people act like if we don’t stigmatize adult non-parents, and other social outliers, we’ll just, go extinct, right?

~So you’re saying the societal contract of parenthood is very burdensome, right? We should amend the contract.
—No! I’m saying people need to be punished! PUNISHED! That is the ONLY WAY!!!

…. It’s like:
—the race agenda: there are other, inferior, social contracts. Eternal vigilance!
—the gender agenda: there is NO POSSIBILITY of another social contract! Don’t make me angry!

—Which are we supposed to believe?
—Yes.

…. So…. You hate Native Americans.
—I do; but it’s important that they love me. I’m ambivalent.

…. (Propaganda professor giving lecture) But I PROMISE you, girls: once you become a MOTHER, all this fear and feebleness will fly away, like the wings of dawn! The intense self-sabotaging that life in an alienating high school couldn’t dispel, that a distant, brooding boyfriend couldn’t fix—and gosh, even flirting with suicide didn’t do the trick! But! But, girls, but! Once you become a Mother—I mean, think what social support society gives to mothers! The cameos in movies! The aristocratic poetry which generates no money, and never did, and not for you! The long hours and no pay! I’m telling you now, that if you asked ANY mother, if motherhood is invigorating, and easy, and empowering, they would say, N—sorry, they would say YES. And I’m telling you, so you don’t have to. Society’s got it All Figured Out, all you have to do, is put your womb, to the wheel! I Promise You, From Now, On: Bulls—I mean, cake! Lots of cake! (waves like, have the servant girls bring in the cake now) You can Trust me girls: I Promise!
(sullen female voiceover) I should have gotten that in writing, while I had the chance.

…. I liked Bella’s voice before: for all its timidness and lack of assertion and self-worth, she was an academically astute girl who in her head, at least, spoke very honestly: very, very disarming candor….

But yeah: contrasted with Jacob’s monkey man act, you know, the red man dog, right…. And now, not only do we have the innocent, wonderful, educated white girl back, (Taylor Swift gasp of surprise) It’s like she isn’t even human anymore…. She’s…. “A white girl bitch in heat?” No! She is a COLD, one, a stature made of stone, of marble…. She is— “I get the idea.”

…. But yeah: I feel sad, I really do, that Stephenie created these pitiable if likable characters in the first three books, and then had to go and turn that sympathy into pot roast, you know—a butchered sacrifice—in the fourth one. Like the one thing she couldn’t do was empowerment. The only way to fake empowerment was…. Contrast, you know: comparison. A lot uglier, quite often, than it sounds, right.

…. It is kinda a sick societal fantasy, you know: you’re ugly and you hate yourself and you’re not worthy; and then, say you have a child: one day, it hurts a little, but then you’re beautiful and superior, and maybe you’re ok, too….

Like, THIS is what meditation teachers mean when they say, “the enlightenment in the future fantasy”, right. You want to start a business or plan some other activity in your life: go ahead, see if you can manage it and pull it off—or else you can’t, and you do it again differently, or do something more appropriate.

But it’s not like—“or else you can’t, and you suck”, right. It’s not like…. One day, when people call me beautiful I’ll agree, because I’ll have chemical changes and psychic powers and a new consciousness and superiority, right…. ~If you’re like, One day I’ll be adequate…. —Like, no; there’s NOT really planning up to that, (although you can wake up into it gradually: but not by planning), and you don’t wake up into it suddenly because you got injected with something, right, (some people have painful enlightenment experiences, but it always involves a choice, and danger—and it’s not the same, “I’m not worth saving bullshit sacrifice self-hatred-pride” that’s been messing you up you’re whole life, right….)….

But yeah: this is bullshit, lies, and propaganda, you know—delusion. Meditation teachers should use this as like, What Can Never Be, Exhibit A, right…. You don’t just keep thinking the same garbage thoughts, and wake up feeling beautiful for the first time, because it’s been exactly six months to the day since you got married, right.

People who have that expectation probably end up in the psych ward, all the time.

I don’t mean that there couldn’t be vampires and monsters. But there couldn’t be this…. This is just BS.

…. God, and she’s the POLITE vampire, right! “Until this moment, I never knew myself, Mr. Darcy! To think I didn’t know to repress my instincts, and to obey society! It’s like—before, I wasn’t English!” “Yes, but you are English now, my love; your reading of English romances and your delusional ideas about yourself have saved you. Perhaps you could write a book: “Domme and Prejudice”, you know: propaganda for a new era….”

It’s like: where does one, BEGIN….? 🤔 💭

…. There REALLY aren’t any words for this, right.

(Jane Austen ladies)
—Own it: you have done wrong, child.
—He said he was from some company: that he was the man to fix the stove. I thought, well, we let Aunt Jemima look after the baby, so~
—Your prattle serves no purpose. You have done wrong.
—You let a strange man in…. You let the DOG in…. Near the BABY.
—I did nothing of the sort! He looked just like you and me, well, ~almost~…. They’re not ~really~ dogs you know…. Aunt Jemima isn’t a dog, is she?
—You rotten sinner! You let a DOG, near the BABY!
—I am afraid she is quite right, my dear; you must own that you did wrong. It was your carnal instincts. And I must say: youthful dalliances are one thing, especially since you only REALLY ever gave him your Left-Over attentions, you weren’t So Bad…. But, God in Heaven, my dear, once you have a real honest to God, White-Baby…. Well, you can’t let a traitorous ~dog~ near it, can you?
—(sobbing) I was wrong…. I was so wrong….
—Well, there there…. The dogs have deceived even our menfolk, you know. They are tricky devils. Every treaty the dogs made with our kind, they broke: until Finally, we broke their back; yet they endure. But I tell you: those broken dog treaties—for them, it has been A Century of Dishonor!

~I mean, it’s amazing, right: it’s an Anglo myth that’s been projected onto Jacob Canis, right…. “Love at first sight”, basically? Doesn’t that more or less go back to the Troubadours in medieval France?…. And it’s like, No, everyone, always…. Oh, but I’m afraid that we live on the Planet of the Dogs, my beautiful corpse-skinned daughter!

~Like it’s, un-fucking-real…. Like, it’s all just gloating in delusions of power she wouldn’t have, and delusions of racism that have seen people, ~KILLED~, you know….

Excrement, you know….

It’s clog-the-toilet-grade waste, you know….

~Like, seriously: if “Breaking Dawn” doesn’t get on some kind of short list for Most Racist 21st Century Romance, right….

What, else is there: how bad does it get?

…. “Don’t worry Karen: just pour a little bleach on your hair; try to get the Italian out: and everything’s fine.”

…. “Red men don’t need your sympathy, children. (sniffs) They heal quick. It comes from being like d—, from being outside a lot.”
(children being conditioned to be racist giggle) (mouths: “dogs”) (they giggle)

~But at least nobody is hurting the children, right. Not even Aunt Jemima!

…. But yeah: I’m glad that white people are the best.

And I’m also glad that there are little porcelain doll girls in the world, too—maybe every white boy who’s born, should get like a, living porcelain doll companion, right: just to kinda…. Yeah, and her starter name could be “Bella (serial number)”, although the little fucker could rename her—you know, as often as he likes. He could call her, Broken Reed: the broken reed, he will not rape, right….

But mostly, I’m just glad that white people are the best. I’m happy for us. We’ve been through a lot: for a while there, people thought that white people weren’t the best, can you imagine?! It was racism! ~But then, Martin Luther King Junior, stood up, and he said, I have a dream, that one day, every white girl will be loved for how Northern she looks; and every white boy will be loved…. Just for how entitled he feels, you know. And maybe, one day, they’ll come together and get married…. And they’ll let us darkies into their hearts, and let us provide free child care, just like we did on the plantation….

You know: or not. They say scram!: we’ll scram. I’m just saying, I have a dream.

~He had a dream, of FREEDOM…. 🗽🥇🕵️‍♂️⚰️

…. (Abraham Lincoln) New Racism is founded on the proposition, that when God formed this country out of the 450 false prophets of the Great Spirit, slain by the Four Thunder Beings of Old, John, Paul, George, and Ringo: he put the words in the mouth of his prophet, Martin Luther King Junior—I have a dream today, that one day, every white child will be loved for the color of her skin, forever, with additional superiority cubes dispensed for marriage and child rearing without incident or the necessity of Swift Punishment from the Thunder Beings, and God, and with any woke infractions on the sanctity of the white race and patriarchy resulting in summary dismissal from the white race and banishment to the Land of Hel, where dwell the half-whites and half-giants of the Democrat Party, where Skaldi and Loki dwell, and the wicked beings who chose Hitler, instead of the white race: not shunning racism, but instead doing the racist thing where you say that racism is “bad”…. What is bad, anyway? If I try to shoot you and you run and escape, isn’t that bad for me? I wanted to kill you! Everything is your point of view…. But white people are the best; this I know. Amen, hallelujah…. Let us go to the Promised Land, children: but I may not get there with you! Sleepy Joe Biden and Saruman from the Lord of the Rings may try to prevent us from lifting whitey up above the goblins….!

~Right? It’s like, common sense, is all we’re asking of the epithets, right. Just common sense. We all need to build up whitey…. Together! OMG….

…. The Anti-Social American Teen Wish List:

1. Betray feminism
2. Paleface power!!!
3. Traumatize parents, hmm (considers) (happy!) Blame it on the Red man dog!

…. As far as the whole vanilla/full pop/girl club things go: on the one hand, I’m still not sure I forgive Stephenie for turning Alice from the sorta awakened millionaire she was in the other books, into a sorta…. Yeah, like, caricature. Like, Jacob is a big black dog; Alice is a little white doll, right.

But it is true that no girl ever ~really~ wants to be the bullied, weaker party, ~every single time~, right: if she were to just follow instincts, as base as instincts can be, informed by nothing by biology and propaganda, (nothing is ever ~just~ instinctual, that’s human), eventually she would want to assert herself—somehow, right.

…. (Voice over) I always knew that someday I would have to fight the government to save the children.
(vampire responding to her thoughts) And how do you know that you’re the one best suited to do anything and everything for your child? And fighting the larger society instead of integrating into it—you know that that’s good for the child, as well?
(flippant) That part’s not important.

…. It is funny how sometimes to be an “American patriot”, to be “normal”, even, you have to be about as sympathetic to the American government, as you’d be to a pack of vampires from Italy, right.

“Can they cook? Can they speak English? Are they really from New York?”
“None of that, Bella—they’re just~ the, /government/!”
(gasp of shock)

…. And just:

(“change my mind” meme) Jacob Black is Aunt Jemima. Change my mind.”

…. Yeah: first Stephenie hardens my patronization of her characters into dislike, and then she rushes in an epic battle in a story that’s already too long, when fighting in her books—I mean, it’s present, more like duels or grudge matches than battles, and very much as a secondary feature of the tales, right…. And it’s like: (turns back) to be generous, and to put the beginning of this plot at page 525, when chapter 27 starts, right: it’s still only slightly over 200 pages ~~to find out that the world vampire government wants to bring you down, and to bring down the world vampire government instead~~…. After literally ~~over 2,000 pages~~ where any fighting was like, two on three, or something like that, small-group fighting: a family vs a group of friends, or else one on one…. It’s just non-sensical pacing, right. It’s just, garbage.

…. “But wait,” said Jacob. “The Cullens’ visitors’ vampirism puts human rights in danger.”
“Shut up, horny Red boy Aunt Jemima,” said Bella primly. “Go back to imprinting yourself on the baby, slave: the beautiful white baby, for whom I would destroy a world.”
Jacob was quiet, doing so, silently and sullenly.

…. “They treated him the way that people who are not animal-lovers treat the pets of their friends.”

(laughing) “I have a dream today.” Oh God, O Isis, please help me…. (laughing)

…. My, what a fucked-up story.

…. Let’s go to the movies, random American movies could be like:

BREAKING DAWN: A NEW DAY FOR NAZI AMERICA
THORIN OAKENSHIELD: SCOURGE OF AFRICA
MY BIG FAT WHITE WEDDING: THIS TIME, I DECIDE TO MARRY A WHITE MALE DOCTOR
SLEEPY JOE: INSIDE A MAFIA DON’S WORLD

—Hermes?
—Yes, friend?
—Are we all gonna die?
—Yes. (nods) All going to die. (beat) Except for me. I can never die.
—Yeah: thanks for that.
—Oh, yeah: I’m always here for you little hoomis. And when you die, I~
—Yeah. I appreciate that.

…. “It made me happy that I didn’t really count as a vampire to him. I was still just Bella.”

Dogs accept me as one of their own. They don’t see me as a white person. They see me as…. Pack Leader. 😸

…. And of course she throws the “psychic’s supply store” (a metaphysical shop?) under the bus, for being, you know—street trash, almost Black, kill ‘em! ~It’s like, new age stores tend to be on the nice side of town, right: but I guess some people literally try to imagine “where psychics would shop” from remembering horror movies, rather than, oh, I don’t know, a Google search? Fuck, right, you could drive around, notice them…. “No no no: the horror movies, they have the answers.”

It’s like, when bad things happen, they happen in threes: (1) the Blacks are so stigmatized, just sticking to them stigmatizes YOU by association, even though (2) in the real world, the metaphysical community can be distressingly Anglo, because although the whole world hates us, low-income and communities of color are more likely to be loyal, at least as far as they’ve been Americanized, to the whole Christian Empire spiel, and (3) Blacks have it so bad: they could literally bring the local Inquisitor the head of a witch that they killed, and the Holy Bishop Persecutor would be like, Who is that, your mother? Hath thou not read, Satan, “Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother?” ~Because we’re all just problems for them, in their mind, right. Some people wouldn’t be allowed to conform if they wasted their lives trying, right.

…. Sometimes I read a passage from “Breaking Dawn”, and it’s like eating something that, according to the highly conservative estimates that are customary, is “expired”, but, you know: it could be ok…. And it might not. I’m pretty sure that won’t make me sick…. I think I threw away all the moldy ones….

…. Jasper is a curious character, although my opinion of him drops each time I learn about him. In no particular order: Southern politician (or could be, easily), “best friend” material, would-be seducer or batterer, Confederate chieftain, fighter, murderer, led-along lover, pathetic-lawyer’s-handler/bully…. Curious people, Stephenie’s characters: but not good friends.

…. It’s not hard to find places on the internet where people vent about well-to-do white men, you know—unresolved trauma and felt powerlessness, as well the whole unresolved system, understandable enough, although it can harden into weird personal slurs, albeit ones without much teeth. (If a certain amount of theatrical skill.)

But yeah: it is funny, the sympathy for the shady lawyer/white collar criminal…. Versus: you know, just being a Native North American, you know. Just literally born of one of the peoples who used to be the only ones here—well, that’s beyond the pale, now. Fraud, for the sake of money, I can understand: but we must draw the line, Somewhere, now!

…. I suppose that’s we are European in the New World, and African in the Old. How charming, no. How charming to be equally alienated from everyone and everything else, no matter where we find ourselves. Americans are truly charming, as a people, wouldn’t you say?

…. Wild conformity, you know. Wild, reckless…. Conformity.

(shrugs) I mean: it’s better than the bulk of Victorian novels, I think. “The Lamplighter”, and unfinishable crap like that: shit that only gets the attention of historians and literary critics writing their strangely historical introductions to Penguin Classics books, or whatever, right. It’s funny: in the 19th century, this would have been a “four-volume novel”, right; now it’s a four-book series, you know: instead of the narration just stopping randomly and picking up again once you’ve placed another coin in the toy car at the mall, or whatever: it reaches a crazy crescendo each time it reaches and end and asks for another quarter, right.

Still basically crap, though…. People would literally risk their lives, risk death: before thinking for themselves—before knowing who they are.

Pathetic, right.

…. And yes: cheap cracks at creative visualization; Old Testament Name Guy > Egyptian Religion Name Guy…. Endless fun. It’s amazing, the way that theologians and church leaders treat romantics, the way that probably a solid majority of romantics just slavishly serve them you know…. When they can manage it. 😁

…. But yeah: it’s funny that this is how it ends, right. It’s like, “I made the government go back through the portal and all my friends are gone, now it’s just me and my lover and our child, and his family, I guess…. What could go wrong? I’ve arrived in paradise, taking care of a child my myself!” And it’s like: that is what it’s about; the sending the government back through the portal was just a function of the familial relationship, right: like, you take your community support back to Italy where it’s always sunny, you goddamn foreign leeches, right…. And it’s like…. What your diagnosis, doctor?

~And it’s like: Bella is finally a hero; Bella isn’t a wimp anymore; Bella should feel proud of herself…. ~closes book in panic~ Book is OVER. Can’t process that.

But yeah: it’s clever how it ends with a character being described as hating themselves within a few pages of the book ending, right. Because isn’t that what the whole damn series is about, no?

…. That and…. Well, anyway. 😉

{my thoughts} – This book was the conclusion to the whole Twilight Saga. I wasn’t completely impressed with this book as I was with the previous three. However – it is clear that this is the ending and with every ending comes some dis-satisfaction. This whole book builds up to a huge battle. The battle that barely takes place. This book helped to show that Bella had the potential to be her own person – to thrive without the constant help and care of the Cullen family – however, it also showed that fairytales don’t always have the greatest endings. Bella has a little girl that she names after her and Edward’s mom – that baby soon is imprinted on by Jacob which means the werewolves can no longer seek out to harm the baby because she is essentially Jacobs soul mate which makes sense as to why Jacob was so hung up on Bella in the previous books. Anyways – it is a good book in its own way I suppose – but it didn’t have the kind of ending that I was interested in. The ending had left me wanting far more then I was given.

{reason for reading} - I honestly read this series because everyone was all hyped up over the movies that were coming out and I wanted to see what all the excitement was about. ( )

*Spoiler Alert*

This was the one book in the saga that I was most looking forward to after the previous one, yet it was also my least favorite read. A good chunk of the plot was just too domestic for me--all the parts about the marriage, and the honeymoon, and starting a family were saturated with homey bliss and that's something that I really don't enjoy reading. As well, the plot was just too convenient. There were so many beautiful opportunities for conflict that the author just overlooked to make everything work out absolutely wonderful and perfect(e.g. Jacob imprinting on Nessie, Bella not being a normal newborn, Charlie's reaction to everything, etc.). It made the story annoying at times, and not grabbing. ( )

I love breaking dawn and it's probably as good as eclipse if not slightly better. I love Bella's choice and the ceremony and then the surprise. The perspective switch was initially quite confusing but gave me a bit of backstory of Jacob and Leah which was interesting and added to the story. Jacob's relationship with his love was quite odd and he should've just somehow ended up with Leah in my opinion. I love Bella's transformation and it would've been interesting to see more of an after and that side explored but could have equally totally ruined it. Overall a 4.5. ( )

Quite an intense read....